In every ministry, one is giving something to someone else; in shared silence, one is giving oneself. Sharing interior silence is the giving of one's inmost being to another. When one does this in a group, everyone shares everybody else's level or degree of interior silence. Thus, everyone in the group tends to move to a deeper place than when alone and relying on one's own limited experience.
This is especially the case when silence is penetrated by the gift of interior silence. Then silence is an encounter with the divine presence within. One rests in the conviction of faith and in peace that transcends joy and sorrow. It brings one in face-to-face contact with God, so to speak, a being-to-being exchange.
~ from TASTE OF SILENCE by Thomas Keating with thanks to Rev. Bruce Allison
"It doesn’t matter to most people that the wind sings in the trees or that a mountain shimmers in the sunlight. But you find life in all this, a life you can partake of."
I replied that no one understands nature: a tree bathed in sunlight, a weathered stone, an animal, a mountain, each has life, has a tale to tell, is a life, suffers, endures, experiences joy, dies -- but we don’t understand it.
As I approached the house, I heard the tune whistled of a little song coming from the upper window. I did not know anything yet, but I listened. The tune stirred my memory and some dormant recollections came to the fore. The music was banal but the whistling was wonderfully sweet, with soft and pleasing notes, unusually pure, as happy and as natural as the song of birds. I stood and listened, enchanted, and at the same time strangely moved without having any kind of accompanying thoughts.
